The Special Race
by Jason Bond
Summary: B5/BSG/Starblazers crossover. Kara Thrace's spirit helps the crew of the Excalibur find a cure in the Colonial ruins settled by the Star Force


**The Special Race**

**Chapter One**

**The Curious Fate of Kara Thrace**

She arose from the surface of the new Earth, slipping the surly bonds it and rising into the cold vacuum of space. Except that her new form didn't feel the chill that lies between the stars and the planets that orbit them. Tinged with sadness at leaving those she loved behind, she ventured off around the new star system that the human race called home.

Meeting her there was the being that had encountered her so long ago, one whose form was very much like her own. To her, he appeared to be a very old, wise man, one who was ancient well before the first humans mingled with the Lords of Kobol on that ancient world.

"It is sad to leave those we loved behind." Lorien said to her as they stood on what would once be known as the Face on Mars in the Cydonia region. "But for you, Kara, your journey is just beginning! Like your mother said, you are special. You are the nexus in which the fates of so many turns. You must accept that."

Kara nodded and replied. "I understand. For so long, I didn't want to accept it. But what is to become of me now? I've done my duty to bring humanity to this new world, so now what?"

"That, my friend, is up to you. Have you ever had a time where you truly could decide what you wanted to do?" Lorien smiled as he watched the young woman ponder that question.

"No, I don't believe I ever had that freedom. Not as a child, not as a cadet in War College, not as an officer in the fleet." She sat down on a rock that had been there for eons, ignoring the sandstorm that was kicking up from the west.

"Perhaps, if I may make a suggestion, you should go back to those worlds that you were forced to leave. It could be that you find where your destiny lies in what you've lost."

Kara chuckled, saying, "They always told me I had a destiny. I thought I had finally achieved it."

Lorien nodded. "That was only one of your destinies. Your next one is up to you, or perhaps it is up to the Fates."

"I thought you had all the answers." Kara said.

"I have always been here, ever since the first flickering of life began so long ago, and in all those millions and millions of years, I have always found more questions than answers. In time, you will find the same to be true in your journeys. But for now, I must return to my homeworld. Things there are churning once again, and I must be there for my children." With that, Lorien went into his noncorporeal form and flew off, leaving her there to ponder what she was to do.

She walked the surface of Mars for what seemed forever, taking her time as she explored region after region. Freed from the needs of a human body, she spent day and night walking. She was able to take rocks into her hand and study their ancient form. She could go deeper into caverns than any human could in her noncorporeal form and see deposits that were laid down well before life ever appeared on any of the habitable worlds the fleet had visited in their journey from the old colonies to this new Earth.

When she became bored, she decided to go back to Earth to see how her old friends were adjusting to life on their new home. She first visited her old commander, Admiral William Adama, only to find that he had died in his sleep just that morning, clutching to the copy of "Searider Falcon" that he used to read to the former Colonial President and his true love, Laura Roslin. She had finally succumbed to cancer shortly after arriving on this world, leaving him heartbroken despite the joy of finding a new home for the human race.

She noted that some years had passed since she last left Lee Adama on that grassy plain, and when she visited him again, she found him happily married to Nurse Ishay, of all people. They seemed very happy on their farm and all seemed to be going well in their little village. The native humans, which they had encountered here, were still very primitive, but appeared to her to be taking to the lessons that they were learning from these newcomers. Without a word, she left the man she almost gave everything up for in search of others.

She found Galen Tyrol on that cold, rocky island that he had described before he left. He had said that it was barren and without anyone else living there, but she could plainly see him smooching on a native redhead as he was taking part in a local celebration with the tribe that he had become a part of. She smiled as she watched the sheer look of happiness and contentment on his face.

She encountered Saul Tigh and his wife Ellen, quietly sitting on their porch in matching chairs as they watched the sun rise over the horizon. She found Athena and Helo on their farm and their daughter Hera now had siblings: a young toddler son and an infant daughter. She found the last Colonial President, Romo Lampkin, playing fetch with his dog.

Lastly, she finally located the man she once despised with a passion that would burn suns. Gaius Baltar had managed to make it the whole way without getting what was due for his role in the destruction of the Colonies. Seduced by one of the blond Cylon Sixes, he had given the enemies of humanity access to the codes in the Defense Mainframe, allowing them to insert a virus that shut down all the ships in the fleet and letting them blast the twelve Colonial worlds with nuclear warhead after nuclear warhead until almost all life had been wiped out. He had been president on New Caprica when the Cylons arrived and meekly surrendered after the remnants of the fleet had to flee in order to survive. He was the single most loathsome person in all of humanity, and when she encountered him, her heart broke.

There he was, weeping as he had tried to save the life of Caprica Six, who had died in childbirth. The child, a boy, had been stillborn, and evidently the stress and strain of giving birth had been too much for the humanoid Cylon. She watched him lay his head on her breast after he finally gave up trying to revive her. To her, it seemed like justice had finally been served, and it was much crueler to him than she would have ever been had she had his fate in her hands.

She knew what he would do now, and she did nothing to stop him. After he had buried his love and their child on the hillside facing their small cabin, he walked back inside and took a rope from a closet and tied it to one of the beams in the ceiling. He stood on a chair, put his head through the noose, and, without hesitation, hanged himself. She watched his spirit fly off from his body shortly after his neck mercifully snapped before he became strangled, and she felt so much sorrow that she decided to leave this world, once and for all. She had had enough heartbreak in her life, and she couldn't stand it even in this new form she now had.

As she once again flew up through the clouds and back into space, she decided to head back to the place of her birth, stopping by the worlds that she had visited along the way. She would go back to the old Earth, nuked and irradiated by the thirteenth tribe of humanity, who had turned out to be ancient Cylons that the humans on Kobol had long ago made. "All this has happened before, all of this will happen again" were the words that went through her mind as she landed on the dead world. One had stayed behind, and she half expected to see the carcass of the Three that had stayed behind.

Surprisingly, she found the former D'anna Biers alive, after a fashion. Cylons could handle radiation much better than humans, so the Three was now living by herself in the ruins of a distant temple, farming nearby lands for the foods that allowed her to survive. Inside the ramshackle abode, she found the Cylon reading, surrounded by impossibly old books. Her eyes were bloodshot, dark circles were underneath her eyes, and she looked so old to Kara. Silently, she peered over the shoulder of the Cylon to see what she was reading and was caught short when she saw that she was reading the Sacred Scrolls, the Bible of the Colonial religion that told the story of the Gods and humanity's exodus from the world they had shared with those same Gods thousands of years ago.

For the first time since her ascension, she took corporeal form in front of someone mortal. D'anna looked up at Kara and stood up, shocked. "Who…who are you?" the Cylon asked.

"You know who I am, D'anna." Kara replied gently.

"Star…Starbuck? Are you…a ghost?" D'anna asked.

An interesting question, one that Kara hadn't pondered. "You know, I'm not quite sure about that. I know that my human body is no longer alive. That's about all I know. How and what I am now is anyone's guess."

D'anna sat back down again, shaking her head. "This can't be real, can it?"

"It's real. I don't know why, but it is."

D'anna looked up at her, and noted, "You don't seem to be angry anymore."

Kara thought for a moment, then replied, "No, I don't. I guess finding a new home for us took all that away."

"Then…then Cavil didn't destroy the fleet after all?"

Kara shook her head. "No, not that he didn't try his damnedest. We found the Colony and took it out. He had kidnapped Hera in an attempt to learn Resurrection, but Adama took the _Galactica_ to it and we managed to free her. Then we jumped the ship one last time and found a new Earth."

D'anna nodded and looked down. "You know, I don't regret going with you. Not for a second." She said it with no bitterness but with incredible sadness, which brought Kara to a pause. "I didn't deserve to go with you. All I've done, all that we did…" She burst out in tears. "We sinned so greatly! We were so WRONG!!!!"

Kara bent down to her and embraced her, whispering in her ear, "its okay! It's going to be okay!"

"How can it be?" D'anna looked at her with tear stained eyes. "We nuked you into near extinction! We would have killed you all had Adama and Roslin not managed to lead you all as brilliantly and as gallantly as they did!"

"It was all John Cavil's fault. Model One was warped in the head, and he caused all of this! I know the story, from the Final Five!"

D'anna choked back a tear and asked, "Is there any way that we can ever be forgiven for what we did? Can we ever repent enough to redeem ourselves for what we did?"

"I don't know about that, but I do know this." Kara said as tears surprisingly built in her eyes. "I can forgive you!" With that, she hugged D'anna, and all the anger, hurt, fear, and every other negative emotion that she had had ever since the Cylon attack evaporated into mist.

They sat and talked for a little while longer before D'anna fell asleep, giving Kara the chance to leave the regretful and repentant Cylon in peace. She decided that she would visit her homeworld of Caprica to see the ruins one last time. After that, perhaps, she would visit the other Colonial worlds and walk amongst those ruins as well. Then, maybe, she would go to the home of the Gods, Kobol, where she had taken the Arrow of Apollo into the Temple of Athena and given the beleaguered fleet hope that they could find Earth after all.

She got lost a few times, but managed to find the radiation belt in the star cluster that had claimed the life of Louanne "Kat" Katraine as they somehow managed to get the fleet through it. Once she had done that, she was able to manage to find her way back to the Colonies. She hadn't been there since rescuing her husband Sam Anders and the rest of the Caprica Buccaneers years ago, and expected to find the same ruins that she left so long ago.

But she found the place newly rebuilt, teeming with new life. Caprica City was being rebuilt from the rubble of the nuclear attack, as well as the other cities on Caprica. She looked around, stunned, and flew off to Picon, former home of the Colonial Fleet. Sure enough, humans were rebuilding there, and so they were Aerilon, Canceron, Leonis, Scorpia, Sagittaron, Gemenon, Tauron, Aquaria, Libron, and Virgon. She looked around in wonder at seeing the humans walking on the surfaces of the Colonial planets, heedless of the radiation.

She shook her head and wondered aloud, "Why? How? Where did they come from?"

A voice came from behind her and it said, "They come from Earth, but not the one you know, Kara Thrace."

Kara turned around and saw three women floating before her in high orbit over Caprica, roughly around the area where the Cylon basestars had wiped out most of the Colonial fleet in one fell swoop. "Who…who are you?"

"My name is Starsha. I was from the planet Iscandar. This is my sister, Astra, and my daughter Sasha."

"Why are you here?" Kara asked. "And how did these humans come here from their Earth?"

Starsha began the tale, and, in doing so, began to plant the seeds that would save the Earth that Kara left many, many generations into the future. They had no idea of that, of course, nor did they have any idea of the alien races that lived around them, but what these humans from another universe would do would help save Earth from a plague unleashed by the servants of a dark, ominous race known as the Shadows.


End file.
